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RALEIGH - Sometimes bigger isn't necessarily better.
Just ask David Beam, president and chief executive officer of JD Beam Inc. on Glenwood Avenue. With only a handful of clients, Beam has turned the business that he founded in 1979 with two employees himself and a
secretary - into a $45 milliona-year business.
Beam spent the last 20 years carefully carving his niche in Raleigh's booming industrial market and now sports a Triangle area portfolio impressive by any standards. JD Beam revenues hit $13 million in 1990, then reached $42 million last year. He's aiming for $45 million this year. Three recent projects include, the Residence Inn at Crabtree Valley, two office buildings at Centennial Campus at N.C. State and a warehouse at The Globe Center Industrial Park next to Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
A life-long North Carolinian, Beam's interest in construction came because he was not allowed to work in the many textile companies his dad managed in North Carolina. While his teenage cohorts found
summer jobs in such textile plants, Beam because of nepotism rules common in such companies - bad to look elsewhere. Anxious to at least work near his friends, he often took jobs helping out construction companies who were renovating or repairing the textile plants.
The construction work piqued his interest, and following his graduation from North Carolina State University with a degree in civil engineering, he partnered that interest with a common-sense approach that the construction business would serve him well wherever he chose to live.
Following college, Beam worked for general contractor George W. Kane in Durham...